Transgressor

User’s Manual

Transgressor
User’s Manual

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User’s Manual

Intro
Thank you for installing Transgressor. This plugin is truly in a class of it’s own. We did our best
to take this new idea and package it in a way that makes it easy and intuitive to shape the
sound of your drums in ways that you just can’t do anywhere else. We hope this plugin
becomes an integral part of your workflow, like it has ours.

System Requirements

This plugin was crafted to be as light as possible on your CPU, enabling you to put this on many
tracks without eating up your processing power. For Mac, you must be running OSX 10.5 or
greater. For windows, you need Windows XP or greater.

Available Formats

This plugin is available in both 32 and 64 bit versions of each format (except RTAS, which is 32
bit only). It is available in the following formats:

Mac VST2, VST3, AU, RTAS, AAX Native

Windows VST2, VST3, RTAS, AAX Native

Registration
The first time you run Transgressor, it will ask you for your username and serial number. You
can find this information in your downloads page. If you do not have a serial number and you
would like to demo the plugin you can press “Continue Trial” to use the plugin in trial mode.

Downloads page URL: ​http://www.bozdigitallabs.com/my-account/downloads/

Trial Mode
When Transgressor is in trial mode, you can use all of the plugin’s functionality. The only
difference is that it will not save it’s settings when you close and reopen the plugin. The preset
save function is also disabled, but the default presets will still load.

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Background
Thank you for purchasing Transgressor. Transgressor is a hybrid EQ and transient shaper. The
simplest way to explain what it does, is it gives you separate EQ control over your transients
and your sustained sounds. This gives you a level of control over your drums that you just
cannot get through EQ or transient designers alone, and once you get a feel for how it works,
it’s amazing how simple it is to use. Whether you need to subtly enhance your drums, or
completely overhaul the sound, Transgressor makes it quick and simple to do so.

The Controls
For quick reference, Transgressor provides a short description of each control when you hover
your mouse over any knob or button. This manual will give you a more in depth understanding
of what these controls do.

Header Bar

Presets
Transgressor comes equipped with its own preset menu. To save a preset, just hit the ‘Save’
icon next to the preset menu, type the name of the preset and hit ​enter. If you enter a name of
an existing preset, the old preset will be overwritten.

Presets can be organized into sub menus by sorting them into folders in your finder/explorer
window. Note that the preset menu only supports one layer of sub folders, so if you put presets
inside a folder that is inside a folder, the preset scanner will not find them.

Presets are sharable across formats, computers and operating systems. This means that if you
save a preset in your DAW in OSX, you can send that preset file to a friend who uses a different
DAW on Windows and it will work exactly the same.

Next to each preset control is a “Reset” button, which resets the controls to their default
settings.

For convenience, you can scroll through the presets by hitting the next/previous buttons.

A/B Bank
This lets you quickly compare different settings in the plugin without losing your knob settings.

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As you make changes to the knobs on the plugin, those changes are saved into whichever bank
is selected. Switch banks to change all the values to what is stored in the other bank. Note that
when you first open the plugin, all changes are stored to both banks until you switch banks for
the first time.

Sidechain (SC)
This lets you set the sidechain to the detector to I​ nternal or E
​ xternal. When set to Internal, your
transient detector will trigger based on the incoming sound. You can set it to External Sidechain
when you want a different sound to trigger your transient. External sidechain is slightly more
complicated in theory, but very powerful once you get the idea.

For example, you may want to put this plugin on your drum room mics, but only increase the
transients on the snare drum hits. In that case you can put this plugin on your room mics, and
route the snare drum to the sidechain. Then the transients will only trigger when the snare drum
is hit, but it will affect the sound on the room mics. This is highly effective for getting big drum
sounds without washing them out in reverb.

Sidechain Listen
This lets you monitor your sidechain signal, to help you dial in the settings. The Sidechain EQ
will be applied to the output when this is enabled.

Mix
This knob blends between your wet and dry signal.

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Transient Section
This section lets you control the sound of your
transients. Your transients are the percussive parts of
your sound. So the attack of your kick drum, the slap
of your bass, or anything with a percussive element to
it.

Transient Gain
Controls the volume of your transients. Turn it up for
more extreme transients, turn it down for softer
transients.

Transient Enable
This lets you turn on/off your transients altogether.
This is especially helpful for muting your transients
while dialing in your sustain tones.

Hold
This lets you set how long the transient will hold at full volume after it is triggered.

Release
​ old ​has finished. This has a pretty
This tells how quickly the transient will fade out after the H
huge effect on how your transients sound, so don’t ignore this one.

EQ
This 3 band Equalizer equalizes only the transient portion of your audio signal. The EQ curve is
shown behind the controls, for convenience in seeing a visual representation of your filter.

Transient EQ Presets
Beyond just giving you the ability to save presets for the entire plugin, you can save and recall
presets for the transient EQ, without affecting any of your other settings.

Transient EQ Enable
This lets you bypass the transient EQ.

Band 1
Band 1 of your EQ gives you 3 filter type options

● High Pass Filter​ - This filter removes low frequencies, while keeping the higher
frequencies unchanged.

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● Low Shelf Filter​ - This lets you control the gain of your low frequencies.
● Bell​ - This filter boosts or cuts sound at your given dialed in frequencies, but not the
frequencies above and below it.

Band 2
● Bell​ - This filter boosts or cuts sound at your given dialed in frequencies, but not the
frequencies above and below it.
● Band Pass - This filter removes any sound above and below whatever is set in your “Hz”
control.
● Slant - This filter simultaneously boost (or cuts) the high frequencies while doing the
opposite to the low frequencies. This is great for quickly adjusting the
brightness/darkness of your tone.

Band 3
● Low Pass Filter​ - This filter removes high frequencies, while keeping the lower
frequencies unchanged.
● High Shelf Filter​ - This lets you control the gain of your high frequencies.
● Bell​ - This filter boosts or cuts sound at your given dialed in frequencies, but not the
frequencies above and below it.

Each band gives you separate control over the gain, frequency and bandwidth of each filter.

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Sustain Section

This section lets you dial in the tone and

level of your sustained sounds. This is great
for having direct control over the sound of
your tails and resonances. This is where you
can bring out or reduce the ring in your
snare, or the boom in your kick drum.

Sustain Gain
Controls the volume of your sustain. Turn it
up for more louder sustains, or down cut
down on sustains and tails.

Sustain Enable
This lets you turn on/off your sustain altogether. This is especially helpful for muting your sustain
while dialing in your transient tones.

Sustain EQ Section
This EQ has the same settings as the Transient EQ. The only difference is that this EQ is
applied the the sustained sound, rather than the transient sound. This is where you can really
dial in how you want your sustains to sound. For details on the EQ’s features, you can just go
straight to the Transient EQ section in this manual. We are always trying to be conscious of
saving electrons (or trees. I guess those are important too).

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Transient Detector Settings

These controls adjust how the transient detector will respond to and
trigger transients. Use these controls to prevent bleed from falsely
triggering transients.

Sensitivity
This controls how sensitive the detector is to transients. When set
low, the original audio will need to contain extremely strong transients
in order to trigger the transient engine. When set high, the detector
will be very sensitive to transients, but may also trigger slight
transients falsely. Set this to the setting that works best for your
material.

Hard/Soft
This switch lets you decide if transients under the threshold will be
triggered or not. When set to hard, any transients that do not reach
the threshold will be ignored and will not trigger anything. When set to
soft, transients that fall below the threshold will still be triggered, but
less extremely.

Set it to Hard when you want to completely eliminate any false triggers, at the risk of possibly
missing some if your threshold isn’t low enough. It’s best for eliminating bleed from triggering
the transient engine.

Set it to hard when you want even subtle hits to trigger the transient engine, including possible
bleed and noise.

Play with both of them and see which suits you better.

Retrigger
This controls how much time must pass between triggered events. When set low, the detector
will detect all transients, and may have some false triggers. If set high, the detector may not
detect super fast passages.

Note: False triggers are not the end of the world. Because this plugin is processing and not
replacing the original audio, most false triggers will not even be noticed unless your settings are
completely out of whack. So don’t over fret this. The best practice is to find the part of your song
that requires the fasted retriggering, and set it so it works there. If you need to automate this for
other sections of the song, you can do that as well.

Sidechain EQ
This is a simple sidechain filter that lets you dial in which frequencies will trigger the transient

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detector. This is handy for weeding out drum bleed and preventing false triggers. This filter only
affects the detector, and not the tone of the processed sound.

Note: If you set the Sidechain EQ to only detect super low frequencies, you will need to boost
the sensitivity to compensate for the fact that really low frequencies are by nature less transient.

Sidechain EQ Mode
This lets you choose whether you want the sidechain filter to be a Low Pass and High Pass
filter, or a single bandpass filter with bandwidth control

Sidechain EQ Enable
This switch lets you enable/disable the sidechain EQ.

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Out Gain
This knob lets you set the output gain of the plugin. You can use this to set the apparent level
the same so that you can make better decisions while A/Bing the processed sound against the
unprocessed sound.

Plugin Enable
This switch enables/bypasses the entire plugin. The plugins background will turn dark when it is
disabled. Nothing is worse than adjusting a knob and wondering why it isn’t doing anything, only
to find out the plugin is bypassed.

Note: There is a small delay introduced by Transgressor, which pretty much any modern DAW
will compensate for the plugin won’t introduce strange comb filtering. When you bypass the
plugin here, it will retain that delay and continue reporting the delay amount to your DAW. This
makes it so you can switch the bypass on and off without the plugin popping as the DAW tries to
realign the delay. This also means that there is an ever so slight amount of CPU power being
used when this plugin is activated but bypassed with this switch. If you want to bypass the
plugin completely, you can you your DAW’s bypass switch.

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Credits
Plugin concept and design: Boz Millar
Graphic design: Marcus Valsecchi

Thank you
A quick thank you is in order for everybody who helped out making this plugin. Thank you to all
of our beta testers who had to put up with all the changes we made since the first demo. A huge
thanks to the CockOS team (​http://www.cockos.com/​) and Oliver Larkin
(​http://www.olilarkin.co.uk/​) and Tale (​http://www.martinic.com/combov/​) for putting together a
great set of tools for creating plugins, and putting up with all our stupid questions.

Contact
If you ever run into issues or have any questions, you can send an email to
support@bozdigitallabs.com​.

For information on becoming an affiliate marketer, you can contact us at

affiliate@bozdigitallabs.com

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